Two Pages is a space for art discourse and reflection upon the artists, exhibitions and works that engage with Jugglers on a number of levels. Submissions of up to 500 words are invited from artists, arts writers and art theory students in particular. Please email us with either completed written works or idea proposals.

We have just pulled down and dissembled a large collection of artists' bits and pieces belonging and precious to Carolyn V Watson, Sam Eyles and Jude Roberts. Organic ephemera indeed. These bits and pieces were the construction parts of the "temporary studio" in the main gallery space at Jugglers Art Space for 2 weeks for these three artists. While they worked away, we watched. We watched, enthralled at "the process."

An essay by Peter Breen

Jugglers Art Space Inc, Level 1 Gallery,

April 13, 2017.

The drawing of silence.

I am now in the third triennium of my life if I live until I’m 90 and I am, inexorably, drawn to questions of my non-eternal physicality. Having come out of a fundamentalist Christian paradigm, the deeply entrenched fear of a literal hell and the wonder of a literal heaven paved with gold streets are, along with other constructs, relegated to a past long gone. But the unknowing of what is after death is drawing me to new spiritual inquiries as poetry, allegory, metaphor, art, music and silence overtake literalism as preferred pathways that comfort and enlighten. Of course, there is the possibility that I might have missed the fork in the road, but as I read in a gift shop in Ireland last year, “If you come to a fork in the road, take it.”

Last Saturday night we packed in about 100 people at Jugglers for our “Status Unknown” gig, an exhibition conceived in the office at 103 when we had a spot to fill. Driven by Kira Bayfield [ Gallery Manager] the concept involved an art work response to the current state of the world with $250 first prize and the first 3 selected to be printed into post cards for circulation. We also decided to make it a democratic selection process so everyone had the chance to vote. And vote they did. The winning work was, in true come from behind style, the democratic process making its presence felt.

I began composing this piece of writing in my head as I sat – seat down and lid closed – on a public toilet. I was thinking about Ben Landers’ name and enjoying the feeling of letting it roll lazily about my head, and slide off my tongue. It’s a pretty good name.

The Queensland Art Gallery’s exhibition No. 1 Neighbour: Art in Papua New Guinea 1966-2016 seeks to chart how the “shared history” between Papua and Australia has affected the art produced in the former. One of the predominant outcomes of the show is its evidencing of how Australia’s governmental administration of its island neighbour from 1905-1975 markedly impacted the artmaking traditions of the approximately 700 cultures which make up Papua. This influence has also been felt through the actions of an Australian company in the establishing of a highly controversial open cut copper mine on the island of Bougainville. The exhibition hence acts as an after-image which represents visual evidence of the often unidirectional influence Australia has on Papua’s customary cultural practices. Simultaneously, galleries such as the Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art (QAGOMA) have facilitated the exhibiting of Papuan artists in Australia (including this current show). Such acts represent a more equitable cross-cultural exchange that allows for the insertion of Papuan cultural traditions into an Australian context that often exerts transnational power over its island neighbour.

Arriving at Juggler’s, I had no idea what to expect. My head was a mixture of nerves and excitement. I hoped that the creative environment would help me to develop my art and my mindset to a new standard. My surroundings were incredible, fine art in a huge variety of mediums and graffiti covering some of the walls. There were interesting things around me no matter where I looked. Not to mention the people – I came into contact with so many kind and creative souls and smiling faces. This was my kind of place.

As you squeeze through the narrow walls leading up to the exhibition, your eyes cannot escape the two large monochromatic portraits, strung rather closely to the viewer’s space. The thick, glossy contours of paint intensify their commanding presence, yet both figures appear to exist in complete tranquility. Draw the Breath as from a Well (2015) and The Heart is the Hub of All Sacred Places (2015) attest to Brisbane-based artist, Leonie Chinn’s art making as a “devotional practice”.[1]

This is the edited version of the opening speech I gave at Jugglers Art Space on September 3, 2016 at the “Refugees Exhibition”.

“If our life is poured out in useless words, we will never hear anything, and in the end, because we have said everything before we had anything to say, we shall be left speechless at the moment of our greatest decision. “

Thomas Merton, American Mystic and Trappist Monk, Peace activist and anti-nuclear campaigner who died in a tragic accident in Bangkok, 1968 at 53.

Friday, August 5th – While the Brisbane Showgrounds was once again swamped by farm animals, show-bags, and carnival rides, Jugglers Art Space treated art lovers to the annual Marie Ellis OAM. Now in its 7th year, the award honours the late Marie Corella Ellis OAM, who was an avid promoter of art and long time resident of Fortitude Valley. The competition has consistently promoted and encouraged the nations artistic talent, and this year was no different.

Biennales have changed the rules for how art is displayed and why exhibitions should occur. Their method of display hinges upon grandiose spectacle and immersive atmosphere. On one hand, biennales have been hailed as the global platform for critiquing society’s obses-sion with spectacle, consumerism and market forces. However, on the other hand, their critics argue that biennales are intrinsically reliant upon innovation and sublime extravagance, which undermines their capacity to provide meaningful and objective critique. The biennale context has prompted the contemporary art-world paradigm, specifically museums, to reevaluate their curatorial practice in the hope to remain relevant in contemporary society. This report will address and analyse how the biennale model, and the shift in curatorial practice it represents and enforces, has impacted the relationship between art and the public.

I am arriving at an austere old derelict looking building it is used as a youth detention center. The weather is weird for Darwin, the sky is white and there is a chill in the air that feels like it is not moving at all. Everything in sight is shadows of grey to white.

There is a process of course and I have to sign in as a pre approved visitor. The girl on guard looks surprisingly like Amy Winehouse a dark beauty fully clothed in military style clothing and boots, with the fashionable thick intense drawn on dark brows of the day to enhance her mysterious tough look. She also has amazing black hair all pilled up on the top of her head and she is efficient.

Chris Inwood de-installed his exhibition “Vouyer” from the Level 1 space at Jugglers today after two weeks and no art sales. He has secured a show at the BCC Square gallery in the city in 2017 after some serious lobbying and foot work and in a climate of closing spaces and an expanding artist cohort in Brisbane this is a significant success. His work as a new and emerging artist was expensive for Brisbane but it sometimes happens that good work – his work is good – and conceptual exhibitions like his fail to connect with collectors. Chris is a philosopher with a serious focus on understanding and meaning.

James Mulholland’s pencil and charcoal on paper drawings at Jugglers Art Space Level 1 gallery are captivatingly haunting works, an unpacking of his own experience as a young male attempting to make sense of maleness incorporated as it so often is in young adult male violence, threat and fear. Self identity and a sense of self comes out in this body of work as a pathway still clouded with uncertainty.

Above Jugglers Artspace on Brunswick Street in Fortitude Valley is a large-scale mural by Brisbane street artist Guido Van Helten. It features a black and white image of a man whose contemplative gaze is directed above and beyond the bustling street and surrounding rooftops. Helten created this tangible image from a photograph and subsequent drawing on paper. Like most of his works, which are painted on water towers, reactors, building facades, and other public spaces around the world, the mural captures the man’s inner essence, and provides a gateway into exploring his story. It is the story Sha Sarwari.

Early last Wednesday morning, before sunrise, I drove to a small beach in Northern New South Wales with a handful of artists and students. We had been invited to the burning of a boat, the next phase of an art project by Sha Sarwari, a former Hazara asylum seeker from Afghanistan and graduate of Griffith University [Queensland College of Art]. Sha has become a close friend over the past 3- 4 years through his work which I see as a very public journaling of his journey from asylum seeker/ refugee/detainee to Australian citizen and justice advocate. When not caring for his new son and developing his arts practice, he works as an interpreter for asylum seekers and detainees under the Australian Government’s “pacific solution.”

What does it mean to talk of “space”? The word at once invites the idea of specified place but also the notion of absence, a gap, a void. Teagan Ramsay’s work can be seen as mediating these two, almost oppositional notions of space. Her ambient, durational videos depict domestic spaces, yet without their usual inhabitants. In this way, they are not so much empty as they are emptied: we can sense people were in them a day, hour or even minute ago. There is something ghostly underlying Ramsay’s interiors. The ghost is haunting because it is at once present and dead. Much the same, the people in Ramsay’s scenes are both there and not there: lingering in the wood, glass and concrete.

Janna Kovak created her installation Between two worlds by digitally projecting florescent light onto two pieces of fabric that she suspended from the ceiling. Visible as I entered the gallery, the work immediately grabbed my attention and encouraged my interaction. The wavering green light beckoned me forward, and as I approached, I was struck by the transparency of the material. It reminded me of the mosquito net that hung over my bed as a child, and provoked by this memory, I stepped through the first veil and into the liminal space.

Transition refers to a process of change or adaption. It is a passage between one form, state, or condition, and another. In disrupting the viewer’s perceptions, it allows for the creation of an alterative reality.

The exhibition Transition at Jugglers Art Space brings together the works of Cherylynne Bullen, Justin Garnsworthy, and Birgit Kehr, to explore how technology can be used to physically alter images, materials, and mediums. Each artwork in the exhibition maps a transition of sorts – from the figurative to the abstract, the materiality of recognisable objects into two-dimensional forms, and a personal transition between differing worlds.